Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Tuberculosis is a very stubborn disease, which ultimately proves fatal to large numbers of people worldwide. In the US, the disease is mainly seen in immigrants from Asia or Latin America. But in Russia, the disease is much more common -- both inside and outside of prison populations. And the degree of drug resistance is becoming very worrisome to international public health monitors.

About 400,000 cases of TB were diagnosed last year in the 15 former Soviet Union states - 40 times the number reported in the United States. Nearly 80,000 of the sick had drug-resistant TB. According to several studies, the prevalence of TB among the region's prisoners is 10 times greater than that of the general population...

..."Tuberculosis doesn't stop at any border or any locked gate," said Goldhaber-Fiebert, a faculty member at Stanford Health Policy, a research center at the university's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

"Drug-resistant TB is rampant in prisons," he said. "When infected prisoners get out, they are thought to drive the TB epidemic in the general population. We are looking to find better ways to deal with that." _HealthNewsDigest

The article above is touting a new and relatively expensive form of DNA screening which uses DNA technology. But in Russia and surrounding countries, the money is not being allocated for proper TB treatment as it is. Why would anyone expect large sums of money to be spent on expensive new screening tests?

The public health system in Russia is slowly collapsing along with the overall health care system. One must pay bribes to receive proper treatment inside Russia for almost any ailment. Those who can do so are as likely to travel to Europe for proper treatment or sophisticated surgeries.

Russia is suffering from demographic shrinkage of ethnic Russians, as well as a serious brain drain to the West. Capital flight is one of many things preventing a prosperous domestic Russian economy from cropping up. Corruption and mafia-style extortion are two other obstacles to a healthy economy in Russia.You may hear that everything is peachy inside the giant bear. But that would be the skankstream media singing you lullabies. Look deeper -- stratify the statistics by ethnicity. You can almost see the ethnic Russians disappearing from Siberia as you watch, for example.High rates of tuberculosis, HIV, alcoholism, nicotine addiction, suicide, violent crime, and more, lead to high death rates -- particularly among Russian men. Russian women are having very few children -- and those who can leave the country to start new families with European, Australian, or North American men, will do so.

2 comments:

In the former Soviet Union a medical service was organised with annual scanning of all population for tuberculosis. In a case of early stages of the illness people were getting proper treatment, and often have been sent to sanatoriums somewhere in mountains or forests with specially healthy air and sun. All these treatments and care including transportation were for free. Being a child about 12 years old I have myself got 2 months in a similar sanatorium near Kiev when tests manifested that I probably at some early stage of tuberculosis. I got recovered successfully or probably t was just a suspicion on illness. There were yet a few people with tuberculosis in developed stages and they were getting medications as well as were living for a long while in such sanatoriums. Better food, clean environment, physical activity like games in open air and in sun were an effective means to improve their status. Since collapse of the S.U. in early 90s, tuberculosis first returned to jails. Conditions in Russian prisons always were terrible but situation changed to worse in 90s. Nowadays in Russia people are starting to smoke tobacco from age of 12 or even 10 y. both male and female. Quality of food dropped considerably as well as living conditions for some part of the population. It is not rare that migrants sleep in Moscow in a small room with area of about 2-3 sqm per person without a proper ventilation. This is a perfect environment for spreading of tuberculosis. All in all, population is getting dumber and physically weaker. Education and medical care is no more for free, even if it can be declared the schools and hospitals have no funds. Teachers as well as physicians are getting a salary that starts from 150 US$ and these money is not enough to survive in Russia where prices for food are higher than in Germany. So, native population of Russia is collapsing and getting to be replaced by quickly breading Muslim people from south of the former S.U. Tuberculosis is just a small but deathly part of the problems.